


In Which Cato Wins; Except he doesn't.

by SoulfulyWicked



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-05
Updated: 2019-04-05
Packaged: 2020-01-05 09:00:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18362828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoulfulyWicked/pseuds/SoulfulyWicked
Summary: Winning isn't at all what Cato expected to be. He won. He won. He won. But he didn't not really, because now he faces everything that comes after. Guess its true what they say, the lucky ones died in the Arena.





	In Which Cato Wins; Except he doesn't.

Winning isn’t at all like he imagined it would be. He’s got his arms locked around Peeta and Katniss is in front of him, bow drawn. It’s a stalemate.

He’s talking. He knows that but he’s not aware of the words spilling out of his mouth. Then he sees her eyes focus on his hand and he realized that Peeta has been tapping an ‘X’ on it. Faster, faster than even her as she draws and lets go of an arrow he moves.

It pierces Peeta’s eye and he doesn't even scream. A kill shot. The canon sounds and he drops him.

“Peeta!”

Cato looms over her and she’s scrambling to grab another arrow but her hands are shaking too much.

“Lights out, Fire-bitch.”

He grabs her and tosses her off the Cornucopia. And then he sits, breath ragged, listening to her screams. He turns his gaze to Peeta’s body, considers dumping it off the side too, just because he’s pissed that Peeta almost got him. But then her canon sounds too.

“Citizens of Panem! You’re 74th Annual Hunger Games Victor! Cato Hadley!”

He doesn’t want to move, in the silence of Katniss’ dying screams. But the Hunger Games don’t end when you win, or so he’s been warned. He gets up, fists up as he howls.

 

 

He won.

 

* * *

 

 

He didn’t win.

He realizes this, as he forced to re-watch the games like he wasn’t apart of it. He watches him kill 6 first, and now knowing it was the little one from 11 who stole his knife and not him, he feels a sense of mild guilt. He squashes it down, he would have killed him, regardless.

He forces his face to remain passive at best and makes sure to grin and laugh at all the right parts. He watches their supplies get blown up and admits he underestimated several people, including Foxface.  
He watches Clove die, hears her screaming for him. Sees Thresh kill her, sees him tell Twelve it was a favor. He swallows down bile, anger and suddenly he feels happy watching Katniss die all over again. Clove should be here with him, they should have won together.

When it's all over he laughs and answers questions.

That night, the nightmares start.

 

* * *

 

He chose to stay in the Capitol, before the Victory Tour. Enobaria and Brutus both looked at him like he was crazy for wanting to postpone going home. He told them it’s because he didnt feel like going home only to have to leave again but really he just didn’t want to get back on the train and see all the places Clove used to be.

He drank.

A lot.

Once or twice he awoke to an Avox bathing him free of vomit and liquor. He let it happen, too numb to everything to want to do much more than let this happen. Now, he could kind of understand why Twelve’s only mentor stayed drunk all the time. He couldn’t see the dead tributes anymore if he couldn’t see anything but blurs.

Sometimes, he wakes up, and the blurs look like trees and he thinks maybe he never won and that he’s still in the Arena. Sometimes, he thinks it would have been better to be in the Arena. To have let Katniss put that damn arrow in his own eye.

The first stop is District Twelve, the escort tells him. Cato nods and nurses his bourbon. There’s a speech prepared for him but he’s not looking forward to reading it. He’s only allowed this one drink, after the escort and his old mentors realized how drunk he was when he got on the train. How drunk he’s been since he’s left the Arena.

He stares out the window once they get close to the train station. He notices how...poor everything looks. Nothing here is clean, all covered with a layer of soot that reminds him this is the coal mining district. No wonder Katniss had ash on her face when she volunteered. He’d thought her dirty, but really, who has any hope of staying clean here?

He waltzes up the platform steps and onto the stage. He tries not to look at Katniss’ family as he reads through the speech. If it wasn't for his voice you’d be able to hear a pin drop. All the people in District Twelve look hungry, he notes.

He makes the mistake of looking up, when he acknowledges the deceit Peeta was able to masterfully construct. They look impassive at his compliment and he falters for a moment. Honoring the tributes, stating their skills, is a thing common in the elite districts. Cato never watched the Victory Tour reels before. Was it not something to be done here?

Then he starts to talk about Katniss. He calls her brave, and hears someone sniffle and his eyes are drawn to the movement. His eyes widen, it is her sister. The one from the tapes and having seen her on screen so much more different from seeing her in person. She’s crying, quietly. She’s alone on stage and he wonders where her mother is. She should be here.

For a moment, guilt consumes him. He didn’t kill Peeta but he did kill Katniss. He would have killed this girl too, had her place not been taken. Would there be more or less guilt in that situation, staring into the defiant eyes of Katniss instead of this little girl’s sadness?

He deviates from the script.

“She was...a good sister.”

With that, he humanizes her. Changes her from the dark, ruthless opponent he faced and had to kill to survive. She’s just a girl who wanted to save her sister.

He’s ushered off the stage after that, but Katniss’ sister’s eyes remain in his mind.

 

Eleven is not much better. He sees Thresh’s family, and he feels no guilt there because he killed Thresh for Clove. But staring at Rue’s family, seeing her mother staring at him, chin raised, he feels sick. He rushed to his speech, only pausing when one of the children speak up.

“Mamma...when is Rue coming home?”

The mother claps a hand around the little one, no older than six perhaps but they’re so hungry ribs are showing and the child could be much older.

He drinks the entire liquor cabinet after.

  
The rest of the districts are no picnic. He can barely get through District 3 without feeling like throwing up. Suddenly, he wants to give up being a Victor. He’d rather die a hundred deaths than have to face the family of a tribute that didn’t make it.

Then comes District One. They cheer for him, although begrudgingly. He realizes then, that these people, even their families, did not care for Marvel or Glimmer. He hadn’t let himself get to know them, it would have been hard enough to kill Clove in the beginning, having known her his entire life that he couldn’t face getting to know anyone else. They failed, and then they are forgotten. He can already hear whispers of “next year it will be different.”

Glimmer and Marvel are just another number.

 

* * *

 

 

And now….Finally he is home. He’s trying to still his breaths, wishing he hadn’t drank everything after Eleven because now he’s had to face the rest of the Victory Tour utterly sober. To be frank, he’s decided, that he hates the idea of being sober ever again. As soon as this is over he’s buying a distillery.

He climbs the steps, thankful that his stylist had been around to disguise the sick paleness his skin had held since the alcohol had been drunk.

The cheers are overwhelming once he’s announced and he places a grin on his face. Pumps his fists and cheers with them. He’s trying so hard to be the Cato he was when he volunteered.

He finishes his speech, tears stubbornly held in his eyes due to the pill that was offered to him.

He does not say what he thinks, that Clove should have been here with him. Sentiments like that have been scrubbed away by Enobaria and Brutus.

Instead, he goes to the training center, which, even now, is bustling with training. He looks at the wall of all the tributes before him who died. And then he raises his sword, the very one he had fought with in the Arena, and carves Clove’s name in gigantic letters. He hears someone try and deny Clove such a big space but he snarls a warning and they disappear. Clove was his friend, his partner. She didn’t win, but he will honor her. In this, at least.

He wonders if she would have had nightmares too.

Sometimes, he thinks he was lucky to win...other times he thinks she was lucky to die.


End file.
